Egypt's Morsi Sets Date for Vote on New Constitution

ENLARGE

A supporter wears a mask depicting Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi at a rally in Cairo on Saturday.
Associated Press

By

Sam Dagher

Updated Dec. 1, 2012 4:04 p.m. ET

CAIRO—Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi announced that a referendum on a new constitution would be held in two weeks, brushing off critics, political opponents and segments of the population who have cast doubt on the legitimacy of the whole process.

"I tell our great people, the opponent before the supporter, help me with all your strength to fulfill the responsibility that you have entrusted me with to manage the nation's affairs," Mr. Morsi said in a speech at a televised official ceremony during which he received a copy of the final draft and set a Dec. 15 date for the referendum.

"This responsibility makes it imperative in front of God, you, the Egyptian nation and the world that I forge ahead and not hesitate to carry out the will of this nation," added Mr. Morsi.

Amid the announcement hundreds of thousands of Islamist supporters of Mr. Morsi rallied in Cairo on Saturday.

Underscoring the deep divisions in the country, most of the speakers railed against judges, secularists and liberal figures, and the media.

"All these people are united to block the Islamists, stop the Islamic project and prevent the implementation of Shariah," lawyer Mamdouh Ismail, referring to Islamic law, told the crowds from a stage erected in front of the main campus of Cairo University.

He branded those opposed to Mr. Morsi and his Islamist allies as "enemies of Egypt and the revolution."

Most of those at the pro-Morsi gathering were bused in from rural areas across the country for what Islamist parties in the government coalition have dubbed a rally around "Shariah and legitimacy."

Among the Islamist leaders in attendance were some belonging to groups that once waged an armed insurrection against the Egyptian state in the 1980s and 1990s. The groups subsequently foreswore violence, and they entered politics after the fall of the regime of former strongman Hosni Mubarak nearly two years ago.

"Egypt is Islamic. We do not want it secular," read one banner.

"Yes to God's rule," said another.

Previously

The Islamist show of force came one day after Mr. Morsi's critics slammed the country's draft constitution after it emerged from a hasty all-night session, with opponents charging that the document was a jumbled attempt to impose Islamic law produced by what they called an unrepresentative body dominated by Islamists.

The draft charter, which the president wants to put to a national vote, emerged a week after Mr. Morsi issued a decree broadly expanding his powers, spurring violent rallies against the president in the worst crisis of his five-month term.

The battle is expected to play out in coming days both in Egypt's courts, where judges will hear challenges to Mr. Morsi's decree, and in the streets, where supporters and opponents have been laying plans for large rallies.

"False, false," shouted thousands of Mr. Morsi's opponents camped in Cairo's Tahrir Square when he announced the referendum's date.

On the opposite side of the Nile outside Cairo University the president's loyalists broke out in celebration.

"His decisions are 100% correct and the judiciary knows that, and these are the revolution's demands anyway," said Abeer Abdul-Rahman, 31, shortly before Mr. Morsi's expected announcement.

Mrs. Abdul-Rahman, who is veiled in black from head to toe except for a slit revealing her eyes, came to Cairo with her husband and two sons from a village in the northeastern province of Ismailiya.

Khairie al-Husseini, a native of Mr. Morsi's hometown in neighboring Sharqiya province, said the hostility toward the president was unjustified and boiled down to a conspiracy by his opponents.

"They are doing everything possible to put obstacles in his way, to send a message to the Egyptian people that he's a failure," said Mr. Khairie, 43, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the dominant party in Mr. Morsi's Islamist coalition.

The draft constitution was finished early Friday by Egypt's 100-member Constituent Assembly, a body that had been conceived as representing Egyptians broadly. The group became dominated by Islamist politicians, however, after it was boycotted by Christian and secular members who had made up more than one-quarter of it.

The assembly, bolstered with replacement members, sprinted to complete the draft ahead of a scheduled hearing Sunday in the country's top court, where the assembly itself faces a challenge as unrepresentative and unconstitutional.

Assembly chairman Hossam El Gheriany hand-delivered the document to President Morsi during a ceremony held Saturday in an auditorium at Cairo's International Conference Center in the presence of top government officials, senior clerics and other members of the assembly.

In his speech at the event, Mr. Morsi went out of his way to reaffirm the legitimacy of the assembly and the process and his own legitimacy, linking it to the June elections and the Jan. 25, 2011, revolution against Mr. Mubarak. He also sounded a conciliatory note to his opponents speaking of the need "to overcome the period of polarization."

"I renew the call for opening a serious national dialogue about the worries of the nation in all honesty and objectivity to end the transitional period as fast as possible to protect our nascent democracy," Mr. Morsi said.

The question for Mr. Morsi and his allies is whether they can overcome a barrage of opposition that has grown in the past week and includes representatives of the judiciary, and youth, liberal and secular forces, as well as many Christians, moderate Islamists and a large cross-section of the population that considers itself independent.

Mixing Religion and Politics

Some of the more controversial articles in the proposed Egyptian constitution:

Article 2: Says that Islam is the religion of the state and that principles of Islamic Shariah are the primary source of legislation.

Article 11: The state has power to issue unspecified laws that regulate 'public morality, discipline and order.

Article 150: President can call binding referendum on 'important matters related to the state's paramount interests.

Tens of thousands of Mr. Morsi's opponents flocked to Tahrir Square on Friday to demand the annulment of the draft constitution, the panel that drafted it and the extraordinary powers Mr. Morsi gave himself.

"We consider the current project for a constitution illegitimate from the standpoint of form and content," the National Salvation Front of opposition political parties, which was formed to confront Mr. Morsi's decree, said in a statement read Friday on Tahrir Square by politician Mohammed ElBaradei. The square has been filled, for eight days, by thousands of Mr. Morsi's opponents.

Many legal experts said they saw major ambiguities and contradictions in several articles dealing with the role of Shariah, or Islamic law; the powers of the president and the legislature; the nature of the judicial and electoral systems; and the establishment of regulatory and oversight bodies and agencies.

The Supreme Constitutional Court is expected to convene on Sunday to take up a case asking to disband the Constituent Assembly, which was formed by the Islamist-dominated lower chamber of Parliament. It was later dissolved by the same court when Egypt was ruled by the interim military that preceded Mr. Morsi's rule.

Many Egyptian legal experts now expect the constitutional court to postpone its case on the body itself, while the administrative branch of the judiciary hears more than a dozen separate lawsuits filed against the decree Mr. Morsi issued last week shielding his own decisions and those of the Constituent Assembly from the judiciary.

If the court finds the Morsi decree is unconstitutional, it could then consider the status of the assembly.

On Friday, a group of judges with the State Council, the body overseeing the administrative judiciary, issued a statement lambasting Mr. Morsi's decree as "worthless" and "null and void."

Several articles introduced to the constitution this past week are already provoking a backlash among many Egyptians.

"Every section tacitly bolsters Islamic rule in Egypt, whether politically or socially," says George Messiha, a member of the dissolved parliament and Coptic Christian, who was among the 26 who boycotted or resigned from the Constituent Assembly before the vote on the constitution Friday.

Also under scrutiny is an article banishing members of the former ruling party of Mr. Mubarak, the ousted president, from political life for 10 years.

Many Morsi opponents who flocked to Tahrir Square on Friday said the president is forcing Egyptians to choose between living with his decrees or accepting a constitution drafted mainly by Islamists.

"He gave us a choice between something that smells bad and something that smells very bad," said Hani Sabet, a retired music producer who came to the square with his wife, Rosemary, a dramatist and novelist.

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